L is for Lizard Love: Themed Activities

My youngest son is getting a lizard!  For those who know geckos, it is a tangerine tornado and black knight mix. He is still working on the name.  Jupiter, Astrid and Nyla are the current top contenders.  While I am not a lizard person myself, I never objected to them running on the walls of the house I lived in while I was in India so I have a positive perspective as the foundation to accepting this new pet.  The bonus is that she can stay contained in his room and in his care.  He gets all the joy and I don't have to take on any of the responsibility (I hope).


Pets are wonderful additions to the family but it is important to find the right one.  My son did a lot of research and carefully chose this specific species.  For example, I would have thought all geckos could walk up walls but this species does not!  And, their colours change from birth to adulthood.  They get darker as they mature. The girl above should become a darker orange and black.

Magic School Bus has a famous lizard in it brilliantly named Liz.  Science lovers will really enjoy that series of books and if you like lizards, you may use Liz to entice your young reader to check out the series since Liz has a key role in it.  There is a particularly relevant called MSB: Cold Feet.

The Kratt brothers, National Geographic and Discovery are all great sources to introduce children to wildlife, including lizards. Rango (voiced by Johnny Depp), Fern Gully and Tangled have lizards in their animated movies. Captain Hook's nemesis TicTock Croc is another animated option.  There are lizards in video games too such as Animal Crossing, Sly Cooper, Star Fox and Undertale.  If any of these interest your child, they can serve as a jumping off point to dive into a study of that lizard species. A trip to the zoo or a reptile exhibit would also be a wonderful first-hand exposure to the species.

Game:  The crocodile dentist game is a fun option.  Leaping Lizards is another good game.

Craft:  Colour a picture of a lizard, there are some very detailed ones that are quite beautiful.  Make a clothespeg into a crocodile and add a magnet to use it to hold onto your art on the fridge door.  Paint a cut out of a lizard with brown or green puffy paint with sand or salt added to give the lizard texture.

Matching;  You can print out 8 geckos and colour each one a different colour.  Cut them in half, laminate them (Clear sticky paper works) and then match the colour pairs.  An alternative would be to put 1-8 spots or stripes on each one and laminate them and match them to a number card (1 spot=1)

Science:  camouflage. Can you hide your toy lizard in plain sight?  Can you colour a chameleon to match a background so it is camouflaged?  Can you hide in a spot where your clothing blends in?

Book:  Another book came to mind by Eric Carle. It is called The Mixed Up Chameleon.  

Toys:  Our dollar store has toy lizards that you can categorize and count.  There are also those ones that stick to the window. Some even crawl on the glass!  That is not just fun, it is science too.

Gross Motor: Can you move like a turtle, basilisk, gecko, snake? As a person, can you jump over the swamp of crocodiles (delineated by two parallel skipping ropes) without falling in? Or hop across a swamp (yard) by jumping from rock (hula hoop) to rock to get across safely?

Fine Motor:  Complete a colour by number, a dot-to-dot or a tracing activity.  Copy out the name of your favourite lizard. Write a story featuring a lizard or write a summary of a book, movie or game as listed above.  Create the next scene for any of those options.  Will Rango go to space? Will TickTockCroc leave Neverland and go to Canada? What if....?

Hope you LOVE enjoying your lizard activities as much as my son will LOVE having his gecko.  But if lizards are not your style....L is for LOVE also and I am sure you can do a LOT with LOVE!


p.s. Noah added fun facts.  Komodo dragons have tiny bones under their scales to act like armour and Water basilisks have a formation on their feet that let's them keep air pockets under their feet so they can run on the surface of water. Chahuas geckos have five set of pads, each smaller than the one before which is what lets them walk on walls without falling!





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